Relationship status influences heterosexual women’s sexual prejudice towards lesbians

A recent study published in The Journal of Social Psychology has unearthed intriguing findings regarding sexual prejudice — the negative attitudes people may harbor towards others based on their sexual orientation. The study found evidence that heterosexual women’s attitudes towards lesbian women are influenced by whether the lesbians are in a relationship.

The findings indicate that heterosexual women tend to distance themselves more socially from single lesbians compared to those in relationships, with this behavior mediated by concerns over unwanted sexual advances. Interestingly, the relationship status of gay men did not influence the reactions of study participants.

In recent years, the visibility of committed gay and lesbian couples has increased, especially following the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right in 2015. Despite a growing acceptance reflected in national surveys, stereotypes linking homosexuality with sexual promiscuity persist. These stereotypes can lead to sexual prejudice. Prior research has shown that gay and lesbian individuals often face such prejudices, but little was known about how their relationship status might affect heterosexual individuals’ reactions.

“We were interested in whether attitudes toward gay and lesbian individuals would change based on their relationship status,” said study author Corey L. Cook, an associate professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University and Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Cologne. “Most research simply examines sexual prejudice (i.e., prejudice toward sexual minority groups and their members) toward aggregated groups. We thought that there might be key information missing based on whether a target individual is single or coupled.”

The research consisted of three separate experiments involving 939 heterosexual undergraduate students from a large southeastern U.S. university.

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The core of each study was a vignette-based experimental design where participants were randomly assigned to different conditions. Each participant read a brief description (a vignette) about a hypothetical fellow student named “Mark” or “Mary.” The vignettes were crafted to manipulate two key variables: the target student’s relationship status (single, in a relationship, or unspecified) and their sexual orientation (gay or heterosexual).

To manipulate these variables, the vignettes described the target’s life in a manner that subtly indicated their sexual orientation and relationship status. For example, descriptions like “very supportive of his decision to come out of the closet” indicated that Mark was gay, whereas phrases like “currently in a steady romantic relationship” or “currently single but interested in dating” clarified the relationship status.

After reading the vignette, participants completed the Social Distancing Scale, a psychological tool used to measure the extent to which an individual desires to maintain social distance from the target described in the vignette. This scale includes items that assess attitudes like likability and avoidance tendencies (e.g., “He/she is the kind of person that I tend to avoid”).

The researchers found that heterosexual men exhibited greater social distancing toward gay men compared to heterosexual men, regardless of the gay men’s relationship status. This indicates a baseline level of sexual prejudice that did not fluctuate with changes in the perceived relationship status of the gay men.

For heterosexual women, however, the results indicated no significant differences in social distancing toward gay men based on their relationship status, suggesting that women’s reactions were not influenced by whether a gay man was single or in a relationship.

The findings regarding lesbian women were more complex and varied by gender of the participants. Heterosexual men displayed less social distancing toward single lesbian women compared to those in a relationship. This response might be influenced by the stereotype or fantasy held by some heterosexual men that single lesbian women might be sexually available or interested in men, which could increase perceived opportunities for sexual liaisons.

In contrast, heterosexual women reported increased social distancing from single lesbian women compared to those in a relationship. This increased social distancing was significantly mediated by the heterosexual women’s perceptions of undesired sexual interest from the single lesbian targets.

“The key finding is that sexual prejudices are based, in part, on perceptions of threats or opportunities associated with the target of prejudice. We found that heterosexual women reported increased social distancing toward single lesbians because they were perceived to pose a threat of unwanted sexual interest, but heterosexual men reported decreased social distancing toward single lesbians, who were potentially seen as sexual opportunities.”

“We were surprised by the fluctuations in heterosexual women’s responses toward single lesbians. Much of the sexual prejudice research suggests that women are much more accepting of sexual minorities. Our research suggests that there are conditions under which heterosexual women are more likely to report sexual prejudice (in this case when a lesbian target is single and interested in dating).”

But the study, like all research, includes some caveats. Primarily, the sample consisted exclusively of undergraduate students from a large southeastern U.S. university, which may not be representative of the broader population.

“It is important to recognize that these findings speak to what can happen rather than what does happen. It will be important to test whether this effect holds over other samples.”

The findings from the study lend support to an affordance management approach to understanding social behavior and prejudices. This approach integrates insights from evolutionary psychology and social psychology, focusing on how humans perceive and respond to potential opportunities (affordances) and threats in their environment, particularly in social contexts.

The affordance management approach posits that humans have evolved to assess their social environment for both risks and rewards. This assessment is influenced by various cues that signal potential threats or opportunities, which in turn affect behavior and attitudes towards others.

“These findings are part of a broader program of research testing an affordance management model of interpersonal perception. We are interested in understanding the social and environmental circumstances that lead people to be more or less likely to use stereotypes or respond in prejudiced ways.”

“One important aspect of these findings is that they support a growing body of research suggesting that people are more likely to report sexual prejudices when they are concerned with unreciprocated sexual advances. Previous research on sexual prejudice focused largely on concerns with gender role and normative violations, and these findings suggest that there are other concerns that can elicit sexual prejudice.”

The study, “Relationship Status Moderates Sexual Prejudice directed toward Lesbian Women but not Gay Men,” was authored by Corey L. Cook and Catherine A. Cottrell.